Federal inmate acquitted of murder in 2022 Muskoka prison killing of former cellmate

Warning: This article contains details that may be disturbing and triggering to readers.

A jury has found Devon Saunders not guilty of murder in the Dec. 2022 stabbing of his former cellmate at Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst.

Following more than a full day of deliberations that concluded Saturday afternoon, the Bracebridge jury acquitted Saunders of murder but found him guilty of manslaughter in the killing of inmate Leslie Ma.

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Already serving a life sentence for the 2008 murder of his former girlfriend Shernell Pierre 18 years ago in Edmonton, Saunders, 57, admitted to killing Ma out of fear he was going to be killed in prison by Ma and his friends.

The court heard during the course of the three-week trial in Bracebridge, presided over by regional senior judge Justice Howard Leibovich, that Saunders, who had been previously jumped by a group of men in the shower, feared for his life and on the night of Dec. 18, 2022, smashed a rock over Ma’s head in a common area before stabbing him in the kitchen of the medium-security prison.

The Crown alleged Saunders planned and carried out the murder while Saunders maintained he was acting in self defence; fearing for months that Ma and his friends inside the prison were going to kill him over a “beef” Saunders had with his former cellmate.

The issues between them, Saunders said, stemmed from a friendship he had with another inmate familiar to Ma at a prison in Manitoba where both men had done time prior to arriving at Beaver Creek. Saunders said Ma, who was his cellmate for about three months, had threatened his life. Ma had been relocated about six months prior to his death.

Saunders was convicted in 2015 of murdering his ex-girlfriend in 2008, when she was shot in the head inside her car that was found burned near the West Edmonton Mall. Saunders was not charged with Pierre’s murder until four years after her death. He has maintained his innocence, hoping to overturn his murder conviction.

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Ma was two years into a 12-year sentence for drug trafficking in Alberta that included the seizure of cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for next week.